Eurogamer vs. Spelunky Daily Challenge

LAST DAY: It's all over! Well, for me Spelunky will never be over, but today is the first day in three weeks where I haven't woken up super early, dragged cables all over my lounge and recorded myself jabbering away over the top of a Daily Challenge. I hope you've enjoyed the videos - I've had great fun doing them and it's a pleasure to load up Steam now and see that every notification is someone playing my favourite game!

To sign off, I've put together a heartfelt tribute to everyone who watched along, featuring a compilation of many of my best deaths. I hope you enjoy it. See you on the leaderboards.

DAY 20: Today is a good news/bad news kinda day. The bad news is that today's Daily Challenge is the last one I'm going to be recording and putting on Eurogamer, although I will still keep playing the game so you can keep an eye on the leaderboards if you want to continue competing.

But the good news is twofold: first, I had an amazing run! You'll see. The second is that I have a very special video prepared for tomorrow, which I think anyone who has watched a few of these challenges will enjoy. Good luck with your runs - today and forever more.

DAY 19: I had such a good feeling about today. As we draw closer to the end of the Spelunky Daily Challenge videos on Eurogamer, I thought today could be a pretty long run, maybe all the way through the Temple. I had a clear head and a strong heart. But it wasn't to be. Pretty spectacularly, in fact! It's one of those ones where you see it coming and go, "Tom, what are you doing? Don't do that." Oh well, there's always tomorrow, at least for now!

DAY 18: I didn't get that much further today than yesterday, but the performance overall was a lot stronger. As Toby in the West Wing would say, I managed to get more blood going to it, and it shows. Hoping to penetrate even deeper tomorrow, but today's run still includes rat-throwing, ghost-dodging and an inevitable outcome. You'll see it coming. Enjoy.

DAY 17: Hmm. I wasn't really feeling it today and you can probably tell that from the video, where I equalled my worst ever performance! Woohoo! Nothing as dramatic or amusing as yesterday's pug failure, either - just good old-fashioned useless death. If nothing else, you can study my video to avoid making the same mistakes. See you tomorrow.

DAY 16: Brilliant comedy death today! Normally I am shattered by a sense of loss when I succumb to my injuries in Spelunky - usually injuries sustained at high speed in the most cack-handed manner imaginable, too - or I am left outraged by injustice. Not so today, where I also make the sort of surprising admission fit for a tell-all interview in Hello or OK. Good luck with your run too.

DAY 15: Today's episode includes two important announcements. Well, one important announcement and a half-fulfilled pledge to start taking more risks. The latter results in some scuffles with scorpions and a lack of due diligence on arrow traps. Never mind!

DAY 14: Midway through today's run, I find myself in the jungle with virtually no lives, no bombs, a rapidly shrinking complement of climbing ropes, and a rapidly growing sense of my own impending doom. What follows isn't a patch on the weekend's running-rings-round-the-ghost, but it includes what I think regular viewers would regard as 'unusually dextrous' platforming. But how far will it take me?

DAY 13: One fortnight ago, as I embarked for the first time on the Daily Challenge in the days before Spelunky PC was released, giant spiders were my eight-legged nemesi. Today? Not so much. The question is, are today's successes evidence of progress or just good fortune? Answers on a bloody corpse impaled on the next set of spikes.

DAY 12: After yesterday's heroic descent into the Temple levels, today's attempt starts off rather inauspiciously as I run straight into a spider. However, things pick up from there and there's some genuine drama to enjoy in the jungle. There's also some terrible maths later on. I can only apologise. How did you do today? Oh, and thanks for all the tips - I feel myself growing as a spelunker!

DAY 11: Like Jose Mourinho returning to Chelsea FC, after yesterday's bout of anger today I am The Happy One, and that sense of relief quickly translates into... a surprisingly strong performance! I didn't get a shotgun or a jetpack (boo!) but I'm getting a bit sick of those rules not paying out anyway, so suggest some new ones if you like. But I did put in a career-best performance. Enjoy your weekend and good luck on your run.

P.S. I'm going to start putting these up in the morning when they're done rather than 4pm. There was a reason for choosing 4pm, but I've forgotten what it is. Subscribe to Eurogamer's YouTube channel or bookmark this page and you won't miss any.

DAY 10: Today's Daily Challenge is brought to you by my righteous anger! Nothing to do with the game, and I sound fairly normal in the video, but believe me, I'm seething. Will this affect my play? Will I finally get a jetpack?

DAY NINE: Oh man. There are some bad early mistakes in today's run. They cost me dear later on. There's some unsympathetic procedural level generation going on, too, but I can't blame that entirely for my woes. Quick reminder: I spice up my Daily Challenge by always seeking to obtain the shotgun and jetpack when I'm aware they're in a level. Boom.

DAY EIGHT: SHOTGUN! The Daily Challenge is considerably enhanced today by the easily accessible presence of our favourite double-barrelled conversation-opener on the left side as you start 2-1. Whether I make fantastic use of it is something you will have to judge.

DAY SEVEN: Today on the Daily Challenge, we have more views on the scoring system courtesy of you guys (thanks!) and a sequence of levels where the gods of procedural generation have laid off on the spider jerks for once. It's not a happy ending, though, which is as we've come to expect.

DAY SIX: Exciting news, cave-divers! Friend-of-Eurogamer Tom Francis and I both find the scoring system in Spelunky Daily Challenge a bit basic - it ranks you by wealth rather than progression and doesn't let you change that - so he has set up an alternative leaderboard: the Spelunky Explorers' Club. That's also a great place to go for videos of people's Daily Challenges. Yesterday I came out of it very well, reaching 4-1, so I set myself some new objectives for the week ahead: obtain the shotgun and jetpack wherever available. Will that come into play today? Can I reach the same dizzy heights (or rather lows)? There's only one way to find out. The walls are shifting...

DAY FIVE: Spoiler: Today's Spelunky Daily Challenge is a gigantic success. Yesterday's seemingly heroic pledge to reach the ice caves sounded tricky at the time, but when you're dealing with Spelunking of this calibre - or more to the point a much more sympathetic arrangement of level designs and much less suicidal idiocy on the part of the player - it's nothing. So tomorrow we're spicing things up. Watch to the end of the video to find out how...

DAY FOUR: I don't know why I have such difficulty with the giant spiders, but this one guy gets completely up in my grill today. And yet is that how I died? You'll have to watch to find out. Other highlights today include shotgun acrobatics and I finally remembered a gamepad! Remember to throw me your Steam ID in the comments so I can look you up on the boards after I finish my run - and good luck with your own Daily Challenge.

DAY THREE: Today's instalment of Eurogamer's Daily Challenge goes a bit better than yesterday's although it includes another incomprehensible death. I do a much better job of navigating past some spider jerks though. I also look up a few people on the leaderboards for additional misery. Did I remember a gamepad this time? Did I f... Got one for tomorrow though! Expect a marked improvement!

DAY TWO: As you may have noticed from my review today, I still love Spelunky. Said review also includes the sad tale of what happened when I tried to throw a bomb at a spider. If you'd like to see that moment in all its glory, you can do so in today's Daily Challenge video below. Warning: I was robbed.

DAY ONE: In yesterday's Spelunky Let's Play video, it took me ages to get to the jungle levels. Some of this was to do with having to talk while I was playing, some of it was down to the unfamiliar PC controls; most of it was down to cacking it up repeatedly. My final death spoke volumes about the skills that had (or rather hadn't) preceded it.

Chris Donlan, who worships Spelunky perhaps more than anyone, informed me that I didn't look down enough, my whip-crack was pitiful, and I needed to stop going back for the idol. With these things in mind, I settled down this morning to try out the new Daily Challenge mode, where everyone in the world is faced with the same set of procedurally generated levels and gets one shot at setting a high score.

It's possible we will repeat this attempt over the next few days, and if nothing else this content will be very snackable, because I am just as likely to fall into a spike trap within 10 seconds of the video starting as anything else. If you're playing Daily Challenge once the game goes on sale tomorrow on Steam, tell me your username and score and I'll watch out for you in future videos.